That detroit is available t bece a bankrupt city. It is 18 billion in debt but not without potentially hurting pensioners. Were in detroit, diane, the big question now is moving forward how long does this whole process take . Were likely to see a reorganization plan in a month or so. But it is likely to be met with opposition from current municipal employees. Reporter the judge gave detroit state appointed emergency manager to file bankruptcy. Outside the courts were protesters. Services, pensions will be on the chopping block, our art institutes the water. It may be the only way to breathe new life into detroit given its 18 billion debt crumbling infrastructure, and high crime rate. In his ruling the judge said, quote, this once proud city cannot pay its debts. At the same time it has an opportunity for a fresh start. I hope that everybody associated with the city will recognize that opportunity. Unquote. In a controversial decision rhodes said retiree pensions could be on the chopping block. Theyre treated like any other contract. They will press their pace as they draw up the bankruptcy plan of adjustment. When youre an institutional creditor, you make decisions. But when you work for your entire life and retire and then somebody says sorry didnt mean it, thats a very different situation. Reporter he told reports hes willing oh to work with the unions. Were trying to be very thoughtful, measuredish, and humane about what we have to do. What i can tell them is that the reality is there is not enough money to address the situation no matter what we do. Reporter and by midday today he had already appealed the judges decision. Diane estherbrook in detroit. With us in San Francisco is michael sweet, a bankruptcy attorney, thank you for your time. My pleasure, tony. Yeah, a pleasure to have you on the program. The pensions are not protected by state constitutions. Thats a position that the unions had argued, as you know. Is that part of the ruling surprising to you . Its surprising me that it went that far. All judge rhodes needed to do was go through the check list of items that you need to hit for bankruptcy. Are they an municipality . Are think insolvent . And thats all he needed to do. He got into a discussion about whether pensions can be impaired. Whether pension payments can be reduced in bankruptcy. He said that he believes that they can. Thats a significant statement to come from the judge because weve never seen that before in a chapter 9 case. No one has ever used chapter 9 in the history of the code to repair or reduce pension payments to pensioners. Wow, there isnt history on this according to what you just said here. So when we get to this question of what is likely in terms of reductions for pensioners, are all bets off here . Well look, you heard what kevin orr said in that leadin piece. I wouldnt say all bets are off. These are human beings. But the fact of the matter, detroit has huge legacy payments, 18 billion in debt and a significant amount of that is going to retirees. Because of the loss of population and drop of revenue they just cant make ends meet. Are all bets off . I wouldnt go that far but people are going to see reductions. I think there would be reductions across the board. There has to be. And it remains to be seen how far the city is going to go or what theyre going push for. The judge made it clear explain this to me. You cant get draconian with the cuts, but when Rhode Islands pensioners saw their pensions cut by 55 . In california they opted to keep pension payments, but they gave up health insurance. So a couple of ways that you can cut this and slice this. What do you think of pension cuts clearly on the table in the detroit case, what are we talking here . 50 . Less . More . Look, you look at different people differently. Youve got people who are retired from the city who has worked for the city for 10, 20 years. You have people whose pension from the city is all they have. You have people who have pension accruing and theyre in a different boat all together. I guess one way to look at it would be do they take more away from the people who have more time to adjustment themselves and live with the reality than you do from people whotheyve been retired for a long time and this is all they have. Hopefully the people doing this do it with an eye towards equity, fairness and different situations that people are in and figure out the best way to make the cut the city needs to make Going Forward doing as little damage as possible to peoples lives. There will be pain inflicted. This is not easy to do to people. This is about cuts, austeri austerity, and paulin falling population rates, lack of revenues, how does this allow the city to rebuild . So at the beginning of the case when you file bankruptcy it stays, stops all the litigation efforts of all the people you owe money to. Detroit owes 18 billion to over a thousand creditors. If it were fighting these collection lawsuit in state court they couldnt get anything done. The bankruptcy says that no one can try to collect money from detroit, and detroit will work out a plan to pay everyone something, less than they would be paid if they were getting paid in full, but something, and well try to share the pain across the board. What were in now, were at the beginning of the stage where kevin orr and his team will put in front of the court a plan a proposal to adjustment the debt and reduce the payments. The court will look at it, and while all this mediation is taking place with the bargaining unites, creditors, and theyre trying to reach an agreement on the side, carry that in together, and hopefully this will be connecticut essential youllly. Michael sweet, a bankruptcy attorney and partner of potts roth child llc. Thank you. French investigators concluded that Yasser Arafat died of natural causes. This contradicts swiss conclusion there is he had a high level of radioactive polonium. Some palestinians suspected foul play. Now this new report from france raises new questions. Reporter in death as in life Yasser Arafat remains a lightening rod for controversy. Nine years after his burial Forensic Experts in france concluded the leader of the Palestinian Authority was not the victim of polonium poisoning, contradicting findings released just last month from swiss scientists. The swiss Findings Report that his death was caused by polonium210. French science tests found polonium found in the natural origin and did not cause the death. His widow reacts to conflicting reports. You can imagine to what extent im upset by these contradictions regarding the best european experts on the matt. What should one think. Reporter an document first reported that swiss scientists found high levels of polonium in blood and urine samples. Arafats widow, a french citizen, asked for a an inquiry eight years after his death. 60 tissue samples were collected and distributed to france, switzerland and russia. Swiss scientists concluded that he was poisoned. They are characteristic of him having a dose of polonium just before he died. So those levels are about 36 times what you would expect in a normal person. Reporter according to palestinian officials russian scientists reported the amount of polonium in arafats samples were inconclusive. France reports it could have come from naturally occurring gasses surrounding the too many. French Officials Say theyll continue their investigation. Mean swiss scientists stand by their findings of probability of 1 to 6 they rate the likelihood of poisoning at level 5. Appreciate it. Thank you. It was an investigation by al jazeeras Clayton Swisher that prompted Yasser Arafats widow to request her husbands body be exhumed to be tested. I spoke with swish behavior todays developments. Reporter well, its turning out to be a scientific food fight here in the capitol. We were told just a short while ago, the swiss remain the only game in town. Theyre hoping the french court will allow them to approach the bench and present their findings along side the french ones because there is a key discrepancy. The french found high levels of polonium but they say thats happening because of the presence of raydon gas. Raydo no, depletes into polonium. The swiss said they measured raydon gas and said it could not have caused those very high levels of polonium. Now the attorneys of mrs. Arafat are looking at all those in involved. Its going to become a he said, she said, and only the judges here in france will make that determination. Why such a huge discrepancy between the french and the swiss findings, and not to mention even the russian conclusion at this point . Well, its hard to say. Where im standing in france in the entire country you cannot by law make public these results. Mrs. Arafat has given some indications of what the report has said as has an expert who was invited to view the results but there is no way to publish them and have a transparent debate. But were going off nonexperts talking about it. We do know polonium was found, but theyre saying raydon gas caused it. And swiss are saying that the poisoning by polonium caused this. New details on the deadly trail derailment in new york city. The brake systems were working properly, but the crash may have been caused by human error. I want you to pick up on these lines. Were hearing reports that a nine official said the engineer found himself nodding off before the accident. Thats what the Associated Press is reporting and there have been other published reports that said he zoned out a bit before the accident. The ntsb was asked about this. They said they were in the midst of engineering the enginee engineinterviewing the engineer and could not confirm those reports. But he was on the second day of a ninedayfive day shift, a routine fiveday shift. Heres ntsb board member. I dont know the specific time he finished the shift, but the day was a typical ninehour day. And these days were routine days. He would have had sufficient time to get a full night sleep. With every indication he would have had time to get full restorative sleep. The question is did he get that full night sleep before he showed up for work at 5 00 a. M. On sunday. The ntsb will look very carefully at the 72 hours before this accident to see what William Rockefeller was doing. And its too far to blame it on human error but they have found no problems, no problems at all with the brakes. Thats where we are at this point. Lisa, transportation experts have talked about technology that may, and we underline that, may have prevented the crash. What can you tell bus that . Reporter its called positive train control, and it essentially takes over the train if the engineer fails to brake or slow down when he should. The ntsb says they have been pushing for this for decades, and they went so far as to saying it could have prevented this crash if it was on this train. Its mandated its a few years away. Lisa, thank you. Its political crisis that has changen thailands capitol for a week. Prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra ordered police to stop battling with antigovernment protesters. The majority of the protesters are middle and upper class residents of bangkok who have been fighting with people from poor and rural areas who support the Prime Minister. Now the protesters have accused the Prime Minister of being a proxy for her brother, former Prime Minister who was ousted in a coup in 2006. They accuse her government of being corrupt. We have more. Reporter it was expected to be another violent day in this part of the thai capitol of bangkok. Riot police prepare once again to trade tear gas and rocks outside of the headquarters of the metropolitan police. Instead they Work Together to pull away barriers that keep them apart. A truce had been called ahead of kings birthday on thursday. Around the corner there was a similar scene. After two days of trying to force their way into the headquarters of Prime MinisterYingluck Shinawatra, they were turned back and those trying to push for political change were able to enter the grounds unopposed. This is another Significant Development in thailands volatile political landscape. They are now aint government protesters are about to storm in. They were told by their leaders not to enter the building itself which was guarded by soldiers. Instead they enjoyed a brief stay on the manicured lawn in clearly what was a choreographed moment. After an hour they left and locked the gate behind them. This government has no right to run the country. Thats why the thai people came to show their power. Its a symbol that we own the country. But their goal of removing the government has not been reached. The Prime Minister is still in charge. She spent part of the day at a rehearsal for the kings celebrations where she talked to the head of the army. They have been involved in talks between the opposing sides in recent days. It seems the protesters wont back long for long. Antigovernment leader took the stage and claimed a partial victory and repeated his well wellworn line that the government must go. At the end of the a confusing day cleaners moved into the area around the Prime Ministers office. But the protesters are still on the streets and the government is still in power meaning people here are no closer to a clear outcome. Al jazeera, bangkok. Meteorologist well, it is the week after thanksgiving. You can see the region were mostly talking about with snow. Minnesota, wisconsin, you can see the snow building in right here. There is a little bit of a break but more snow is on the way. Temperatures right now are getting very cold. Bismarck is at 13 degrees. Rapid city is at 14. There is a lot of windy conditions across the region. This is making it feel much colder than it is. Rapid city right now feels like minus 10. If youre traveling on any of these highways you definitely want warmer close in your car. If you break down on these roads its going to feel and be very dangerous for you to get out there and change that tire. Now we have a lot of warnings in place. Winter storm warnings all across the board for the Northern Tier states because were going to be getting a lot of snow as well. Now tomorrow the snow starts to move a little bit more towards the great lakes. In this region up here, northern minnesota and wisconsin, were talking about anywhere up to a foot of snow in that region as well as in colorado, eight inches of snow for you. Wow, thanks. Brace yourself. Test scores American Kids are not doing any better than a decade ago. But the rest of the world is pulling ahead. Breaking down the numbers coming up. Also the price of cheap leather. Well take a look at the toxic chemicals spilling into one nations water supply. Is the curve. There are no published reports this morning including from wabc, those reports indicate that the engineer, William Rockefeller has said he may have is you welcome back to Al Jazeera America. Two new test scores show that American Students are not making the grade. They compare scores to their peers. Reporter it shows yet again tests that American Students are taking, they lag compared to their international peers. The program tested 15yearolds around the countries. The United States falls at the middle of the pact, but it did not even crack the top 20. Only 8 of American Teams scored in the top two levels. Math. Chair that to shanghai where nearly half of the students tested they aced the exam. San francisco, japan, united kingdom, estonia, slovenia, latvia all did better than u. S. Students. After 12 years of these tests the United States has not really improved its scores much. The education secretary tony called it the picture of stagnation. There is a lot of work that needs to be done. But to make you feel better these tests arent that criminal, but the bigger thing to learn is critical thinking. Higher order thinking. We were just talking about it. We were just talking about it. It links to reading, comprehension, and hang on to the music, and it links to matthew. Thats why some advocates say dont freak out about these kinds of tests and comparison because a lot of it based on memorization and the most important is critical thinking. Thank you. Now. Youve been hearing that detroit has become the largest municipality to file bankruptcy. David, remember us again, how serious are detroits financial problems . Its very serious. Its serious to the point of all the money that the city of detroit takes in to their tax receipts and revenue, 0. 40 on the dollar has to go as far as dealing with the debt that detroit has accumulated. If they did nothing that proportion would go up to 0. 65 on the dollar. That is money that could not be spent on garbage collection, firefighting, and police. Its eating up a huge portion of the money that detroit wants to spend to rebuild the city. How couldwhat we are seeing and have seen in detroit, ripple out elsewhere . It could have an effect because there are cities that are considering a bankruptcy type of format because they are also in the red. If detroit is able to do this by cutting back on pensions that workers were promised or taking it to the unions you might see some other cities follow suit and say it worked for motown. Perhaps the city of chicago, well talk to somebody on our show on that city. A lot of people are watching this very closely as a way to cut back on pension obligations. Some are heading to federal court. What else are you working on . We have a great show. I know when you were at turner broadcasting several years ago there was that no smoking policy. Well, that policy is embraced with more companies on the front end. In other words, they will not hire you if you test positive for tobacco use. This policy is spreading. Well talk about the pros and cons. This has just fired up people all over social media. That is coming up at 7 00 eastern on a real money. David shuster. So were just months away from the world cup in brazil, but there are safety concerns there. We have preview of the sports. Reporter yeah